John Jefferson
President Donald Trump’s tremendous start in sealing the U.S. border and deporting illegal migrants can be a springboard for a global initiative to mobilize like-minded world leaders to do the same. Now is the time for the State Department to convoke a worldwide summit of national leaders, officials, organizations, and citizens who are aligned with Trump to coordinate the international fight against illegal immigration.
On an international stage, Trump could shine a bright light on the funding sources and tactics of an axis of globalist NGOs, international organizations, and left-wing, open-border politicians. For years, this migration “industry” has built out networks and support mechanisms that encourage and assist millions of people, confronted with economic privation and corrupt overlords in their homelands, to pick up and flee to the developed world.
The journeys are mostly clandestine and unauthorized, often dangerous. The migration industry’s lawyers, activists, and politicians have cleverly manipulated outdated international legal obligations to pressure First-World countries into accepting this never-ending stream of economic migrants under the guise that they are authentic political refugees and asylum-seekers. Blindly funded by donor governments, the migration industry continues to collect billions perpetuating this endless cycle.
An international summit, convoked and led by Trump, could be the start of overturning this self-interested and, yes, corrupt migration complex. A Trump summit against illegal migration would assemble like-minded world leaders and send a clarion call that global stability, rule of law, and human safety require countries to tain strong borders and enforce sensible national security priorities when dealing with dubious refugees, asylum-seekers, and unauthorized migrants.
For years, the “international community” has been the playground of far-left globalists whose leitmotif has been to advocate ever more open-borderism. They have orchestrated countless world-leader powwows and conferences from Brussels to New York, from Washington to Mexico City, all helping to lay the groundwork for today’s global migratory chaos. President Trump’s summit would dramatically reverse these practices and represent an historic watershed change by demanding new international norms and repudiating open-border orthodoxy.
Trump and other world leaders could start by renouncing the wrongly named “Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration,” of 2018, and the United Nations “New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants,” all designed to strongarm national governments to open their borders to unauthorized migration. Trump could also use the summit to loudly denounce the so-called “Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection,” proclaimed in 2022 by the Biden administration to help unleash migration chaos all across the Americas. Trump’s summiteers should denounce politicians in Latin America and elsewhere who have proclaimed the “right to migrate” and remind governments around the world of their obligation to take back their deported nationals.
While presidential rhetoric is always a valuable tool in shaping world opinion, the Trump global summit should be much more than a symbolic repudiation of far-left globalist declarations and pronouncements. There is also a dire need for concrete action to start specific new processes to reform and replace the legal norms that the migration industry has manipulated so that, in practice, illegal migrants can always claim a “right” to stay.
These practices and legal norms are rooted in the antiquated and flawed 1951 UN Refugee Convention, and its 1967 protocol, along with a host of other international legal instruments. Most governments, particularly those in Europe and the United States, acceded to these international commitments during an era of almost no significant economic migration. The 1951 convention was designed to address dislocated population groups in the aftermath of the Second World War and to help individuals fleeing communist tyranny during the Cold War.
The world is today dramatically different from the time of the 1951 convention. Because the underlying world facts have changed, the international legal framework must change: clausula rebus sic stantibus, as the long-standing legal doctrine acknowledges. The summit can be the much-needed international political push that launches this long-overdue legal reform.
To replace the 1951 convention and its related legal instruments, the summit should gather independent subject-matter experts, such as the distinguished migration law scholars in the International Network of Immigration Research (INIR), to redesign the entire legal framework, particularly the obligations of countries in dealing with millions of border-jumpers, refugees and asylum-seekers. These independent scholars should be given a mandate and the necessary resources to carry out the will of the summit. If necessary, the selected scholars can continue their deliberations after the summiteers have returned home, and they can report their findings and recommendations in a follow-on world conference.
It is certain that attempting to reform today’s globalist migration industry by working inside the United Nations system is a fool’s errand. The UN bureaucratic processes at Turtle Bay would smother any Trump State Department initiative to remake the “rights of migrants” legal machinery. A better approach for reform is to bypass the UN system altogether and win over the world of public opinion. The Trump summit strategy would do just that by mobilizing and educating a worldwide movement of leaders, governments, friendly media, and citizens to demand change.
The summit must also demand that donor states cut off funding to groups like UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization of Migration (IOM), and powerful NGOs in cahoots with complicit leftwing governments who are dug in to defend the status quo. The amounts of funding that donor governments provide these agents of the global migration industry are much more than most realize. UNHCR alone has over $10 billion in annual funding, and IOM receives over $3.5 billion.
Under Biden, the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (known as PRM) paid out billions of dollars each year to groups like UNHCR and IOM, which then passed money to illegal migrants for their travel. Immediately after coming to office, Trump’s officials at State put a stop to PRM’s financing of such unauthorized migration. U.S. taxpayer funds are no longer being funneled to illegal migrants, but other donor nations still pay for clandestine journeys through dangerous regions like the Darien Gap or to cross the Mediterranean Sea. The Trump summit needs to shine a bright light on all of these funding practices around the world. Donor governments must insist their financial contributions, if they are not entirely cut off, be dedicated to deportations or keeping people in their homelands.
On a global stage, the U.S. president can create a new international dynamic regarding illegal migration. He would not only reinforce policies of like-minded heads of government such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, but he could offer valuable support to other European national leaders, such as Britain’s Nigel Farage, France’s Marine Le Pen, and Germany’s Alice Weidel. Trump’s summit strategy would outflank the open-border extremists who dominate the Europe Union in Brussels by reaching out directly to EU member countries such as Austria, Poland, Greece and many other national actors.
From other parts of the world, other national governments, not always Washington’s allies, but in step with the United States on illegal migration, would certainly attend the summit. This long list would likely include Israel, Turkey, Tunisia, Thailand, Canada, Australia, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador. Many more countries would doubtless respond to Washington’s summons for a global summit.
The moment is both opportune and historic. The next step is for the White House to task the State Department with organizing this unprecedented global gathering, to trumpet Trump’s call to friendly world leaders to come together to break the illegal migration industry.
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